All That You Can't Leave Behind
by Winterlyn Dow
Summary: This one-shot is simply a deeper look into Kylo Ren's mindset during the two scenes in the movie where he interrogates Rey (or, more precisely, what I imagine he was thinking and feeling as he tried to get the map to Skywalker out of her head).


**A/N: I completely blame JinxedSydney for this foray into the Star Wars universe. She has asked me several times to write a little Reylo piece and though I don't think this is quite what she had in mind, it's what came out. I'll admit that this isn't a terribly original idea, but it's the one that I felt most inspired to write in this universe. It's simply a bit of a deeper look at two scenes from the movie, mostly delving into Kylo Ren's mindset as he interrogates Rey. I haven't read much FF in this universe, so I don't know if there are already 10,000 takes on this idea (there probably are), but I hope you enjoy this one anyway.**

 **I own nothing and profit in no way.**

* * *

The Scene:

Amid the chaos and smoke of the battle on Takodana, a masked figure steps out of an elegant shuttle. Soldiers of the First Order in their distinctive white armor fight all around the blackened rubble their bombers have created. One trooper sees the leader of the Knights of Ren and rushes to deliver an important bit of news...

* * *

"Sir, the droid was spotted heading west..."

Kylo Ren turned, gazing coolly behind his mask at the trooper who addressed him across the fiery, ruined landscape.

"...with a girl," the soldier added.

The master of the Knights of Ren snapped his head around in the opposite direction, narrowing his eyes and glaring westward. He felt his rage begin to crawl up his throat.

 _With a girl._

 _That girl again._

A mere girl had taken the thing he most wanted, stealing it out from under his nose and sneaking away from that wasteland of a planet where he'd tracked it. A mere girl had made General Hux's troops look foolish and somehow slipped through the iron grasp of the First Order. A mere girl had openly defied his will and completely frustrated his plans. He might have laughed at the stupidity of it all, the sheer preposterousness of it, if his anger weren't so great and his patience not already at its end.

Because no matter how implausible it might seem, _this mere girl_ was in possession of the map to Skywalker despite his efforts to obtain it for himself.

 _The audacity. The insupportable nerve of her!_

Who was she to think she could keep from him what was his? Who was she to deny him his right to revenge? Some insignificant little girl was all that stood between him and his path to his former master. She was all that stood between the master of the Knights of Ren and the light he longed to extinguish.

The light he _must_ extinguish.

He growled, low in his throat, beginning to move toward the western forest. He might have simply sent a squadron after her but his fury propelled him and he stormed off, to search for her himself. No power in the universe could save this girl, this impudent _thief,_ from the wrath of Kylo Ren. He would find her and the droid she was trying to keep from him. He would not be denied his prize.

He would find the thing he needed to end his torment once and for all. _And woe be to anyone who dared to try to keep it from him._

She was easy enough to trace. Ren stepped over the bodies the girl had left in her wake; fallen troopers, blaster holes burned into their chests. _She was a killer, then. Perhaps not so delicate as the pathetic, frail thing he had conjured in his mind when he had first been told of her._ No matter. She could not be fierce enough to challenge him. He followed the trampled plants and broken branches which marked her path. She was not even trying to hide her tracks, but if she had, it would have made no difference. When he was close enough, he could hear her, her light footsteps stumbling over fallen branches and exposed roots, crushing dried leaves beneath her boots. But before that, he could _feel_ her.

 _The force, it seemed, was directing him, marshaling his steps and drawing him closer to his quarry._

He might have smiled at the thought, but the time spent chasing the map across galaxies and the vast resources expended in the search rendered his mood too sour.

The knight drew his saber, its red beam crackling and hissing as he swung it before him, cutting a path through the underbrush as he stalked the girl. He could see her now, a small figure glimpsed through the tinted face shield of his helmet. She was just ahead, scrambling along the rough path through a gorge. She held a blaster in one hand, swinging it wildly around, trying to find her target. Kylo Ren obliged her, stepping into her sight line, saber held before him defensively.

Her first shot seemed unintentional, almost as if she flinched at the sight of him, reflexively pulling the trigger. The next few blasts were delivered with purpose, but not much accuracy, and those that came close, he deflected easily enough. She scampered up a steep hill ahead of him, breathing heavily, as much from fear as from exertion, if he had to guess about it. She fired off five more shots in rapid succession and he blocked them, the light blade of his weapon sparking and spitting as he did. Finally, bored with the chase, he thrust his hand out toward her, using the power of the force to knock her arm back so that her blaster now pointed at the ground. He froze her in her place, stealing her movement as well as her voice. The knight stopped his pursuit and studied the paralyzed girl from a distance of perhaps ten feet. She seemed ordinary enough. He couldn't fathom how she had eluded him for so long.

"The girl I've heard so much about," Kylo Ren said by way of greeting, his voice distorted by the filtered mouthpiece of his armored helmet. She did not give him the courtesy of replying. But then, she couldn't have, even had she desired it. He approached slowly before circling around her back.

"The droid," he began, his voice measured, more calm than he felt. He was frowning beneath his mask, regarding the girl's slight frame. He could not deny that he was galled. The effrontery of this slip of nothing defying _him._ His temper flared and he raised his saber, red blade now a mere inch from her cheek. "Where is it?" he demanded. He saw her eyes flick toward the blade.

 _Not completely paralyzed, then. Odd._

Kylo Ren withdrew his saber, dousing the blade and slipping the handle into his belt. He began moving again, continuing to circle her until they were face to face.

Well, face to mask.

The girl could not speak but he felt her fear rolling off of her in waves. He lifted his hand, reaching toward her face. The closer he was to a mind, the more easily he could discover its secrets. When the outermost edges of her thoughts began to cause his fingertips to tingle, he plunged in, full-bore. She grimaced, her breathing labored. It was gratifying for him to see it; to _feel_ it. Her pain at his hand was a small measure of payback for what she had put him through. Images winked in and out of his vision as he rifled through her thoughts, looking for the droid. He saw the girl trudging through the sand on Jakku, dragging a net full of rusted parts and ruined machinery behind her.

 _A filthy scavenger,_ he thought with disgust, flicking the image away. The girl gritted her teeth against the sensation of it. The knight's hand trembled slightly with his efforts and he dug deeper, trying to see the BB unit and where she might have sent it. As he did, he came across something quite unexpected.

"The map," he whispered. His voice took on an air of incredulity. "You've seen it!"

Before he could examine his discovery further, he was interrupted by the arrival of a small band of his soldiers. Their sergeant spoke to him, updating him on the skirmish.

"Sir, resistance fighters. We need more troops."

Kylo Ren considered the request for a moment, then made his decision.

"Pull the division out. Forget the droid. We have what we need." He had only glimpsed it for a moment, but the map in the girl's head was what he had searched for all this long while. He was sure of it. After chasing ragtag resistance fighters, rebel sympathizers, First Order traitors, and this one small girl across countless star systems, he finally had the missing piece of information that would lead him to the last Jedi.

He was one step away from breaking the hold of the light. He would finally be free.

Kylo Ren had a task to complete, and he was anxious to get started.

As the troopers fanned out to form a tight perimeter around him, the knight employed a slight wave of his hand by the girl's ear. The intent behind the gesture was dark and focused. Her mind and her vision went black at the movement. The rigidity holding her prisoner drained away in an instant and she fell limply into the waiting arms of the master of the Knights of Ren. Hoisting her up and drawing her into his chest, he carried her to his waiting shuttle.

* * *

Kylo Ren sat on a bench in his chamber, silent and unmoving, willing the girl to awaken. His shuttle had landed on General Hux's star destroyer over an hour earlier, and the scavenger had still not regained consciousness. He glared at the girl, his impatience growing, and finally kicked at one metal leg of the bench with the heel of his boot, creating a thunderous, echoing metallic clap in the room. The girl's eyes flew open at the sound and her head jerked up. Confusion colored her features. She blinked twice, looking around her. Finally, she noticed him seated before her.

"Where am I?"

She dared to question him? How amusing.

 _She's young,_ he reasoned. It was likely the girl didn't know who he was. She might not even fully grasp that she was in the custody of the First Order.

"You're my guest." The statement was neutral and though he delivered it in a reasonably polite tone, the distortion from his mask gave the words an ominous sound.

"Where are the others?"

She was far too demanding for his taste, and far too calm considering he had her restrained against a rather cold, upright metal platform with heavy shackles at her wrists and ankles. A series of leather straps criss-crossed her body, binding her tightly to the platform so that she could not raise off of it even a centimeter. The device that cradled her head could be used to deliver any number of unpleasant sensations, some of which had been known to drive men mad before killing them. How was it, then, that she managed to sound so impertinent in a situation which had reduced grown men to groveling and sobbing? He wasn't sure if it was courage or stupidity, but it irritated him.

"You mean the murderers, traitors, and thieves you call friends? You'll be relieved to hear, I have no idea."

She was relieved. He could sense it. He could also sense her fear, but there was something else layered over top of it, and it gave him pause.

 _Indignation. Defiance. Murderous intent._

They stared at each other in silence for a moment before he spoke again. This time, there was a hint of disbelief in his voice that showed through even with the distortion caused by his mask. "You still want to kill me." _Incredible._

Kylo Ren had barely even tried to pick that desire out of the muddle of her emotions. It was so clearly trumpeted, she might as well have been shouting it at him just then. The knight turned the stolen idea over in his own head, examining it, and finding that it raised in him an odd mixture of feelings. He was fascinated that such a weak child could muster enough spirit to even entertain the idea of doing _him_ violence (when she must have known very well after Takodana that he could snap her neck with the slightest flick of his wrist). He was fascinated, yes, but he was also insulted by the idea.

 _She_ kill _him?_ What hubris! The notion would be laughable, if only he were prone to such displays of humor.

"That happens when you're being hunted by a creature in a mask," she replied without hesitation.

Her tone caught him off guard. She sounded almost accusatory. Was she taking him to task? The very thought of it caused him to glower at her, but of course, she could not tell it through his mask.

Ren wondered if the girl would be so bold if she could see his eyes as she spat and hissed at him. He stood then, reaching up and triggering the latch of his mask with one finger. He removed the dark helmet, holding it by its crown for a spare moment before driving it into the bits of ash and bone which filled the well on a special table he kept in the corner of the room. The chamber was dim, but it seemed bright to him after having looked at her for so long through the tinted visor of his mask. He didn't squint or blink, though. The knight was far too disciplined to allow such a show of weakness.

"Tell me about the droid," he commanded the girl.

"He's a BB unit with a selenium drive and a thermal hyperscan vindicator..."

 _Quibbling. Misdirection. Games._

He had no time for it. He interrupted her rote recitation of the droid's manual.

"He's carrying a section of a navigational chart, and we have the rest, recovered from the archives of the Empire, but we need the last piece. Somehow, you convinced the droid to show it to you."

The girl clenched her jaw, averting her eyes as if she could safeguard her secrets with such useless endeavors. The knight pushed her further.

"You. A _scavenger_." His disdain was evident. He could feel her anger flare at it. _Good._

She cut her eyes at him, glaring for a second before looking away. He tilted his head toward her, his voice softening.

"You know I can take whatever I want," he said quietly, and the hint of sympathy in his voice gnawed at her. It was a threat, masked as a plea. _Save yourself the pain, little one,_ he seemed to say, though they both knew very well that he cared nothing for her comfort.

He leaned in closer, raising his hand as if he meant to stroke her hair. The girl flinched and turned her face away from him, failing to control her breathing and he thought she might be a second away from crying. He did not touch her, stopping his fingertips a mere breath away from caressing her cheek. The tableau might appear almost tender at a glance, but the picture was a false one that belied the torment and brutality hidden beneath it.

Kylo Ren was careful at first, barely touching her mind, scanning only the surface; reading what she offered without probing deeper. _Rey,_ he thought. _That's her name._ But then... nothing. Just a brightness that filled his mind and seemed to dampen his perception, as if he had stepped from a dark room into the bright sunlight and lost the input from his vision for a moment as his eyes adjusted. It felt like... the force. It felt like the _light._ He frowned slightly. This had been easier for him on Takodana—he felt the force then too, but assumed it was merely around her, circulating thickly in and through that ancient world. There were certain places in the universe strong with the force, just as there were certain people strong with it. Takodana had felt to him like Dagobah.

 _It was always the green places,_ he thought. _The warm places._ He wasn't sure why that was.

The force had seemed a nearly tangible thing in the western forest where he had pursued and subdued the scavenger. It seemed to pulse through the very air and permeate the land. But, as he reached for the girl's mind again, he was filled with that same sensation he had felt in the forest. It was then that he understood it was the _girl;_ that the girl carried the force within her. That like him, it flowed thick through her veins, coloring her every thought and deed.

It unsettled him. His eyes narrowed slightly.

Ren pushed harder, and this time, when he reached into her mind, it was forceful; violent; a fist punched through glass. The glass was shattered, yes, but the knuckles were bloodied as well. It was different with most other people, but such intrusion was not without sacrifice when he invaded a mind strong with the force. It had cost them both. He ground his teeth, ignoring the pain; the drain of it. He had endured worse and he had need of what she held tightly in her mind. He sorted through what he found, ignoring the way the girl trembled and shook; ignoring the tears that began to track down her cheeks. As the memories, _Rey's_ memories, slipped faster and faster through his fingers, his touch softened, and he seemed to hesitate, like a child who is looking for his shoes but is distracted by the toys and playthings he has to sift through in order to find them. He was meant to be looking for something specific but his fascination was piqued by everything else around him. Memories, most sharp and bleak, but some faded and sweet, captured his attention. He saw a child's hands gripping a small training saber and he paused to consider the image. It was a brief flash, dim and only partly formed, but it echoed something deep inside his own mind. There was a bright moment of wonder, not from the thoughts he was pillaging, but within himself. He shoved it aside. Wide-eyed joy, hope, and optimism... Childish notions, long since abandoned. They were useless things, crutches for the undisciplined who fooled themselves into thinking everything had a meaning; that everything happened to further some greater purpose. That was the great lie of the Jedi, and the great weakness. It rendered them unwilling and unable to do what must be done to assure ascendancy.

 _Always prattling endlessly about balance. Always droning on about justice. Never understanding that the strong created their own justice and that balance was merely the wish of those too feeble to take what they wanted._

Ren pressed on, burrowing deeper into the girl's mind. He found other images, clearer ones, more completely formed. He tasted her loneliness; her overarching fear of leaving that scorched wasteland she called home. He felt her exhaustion; her desperation. He told her so, knowing it would disturb her that he could see those thoughts.

"You're so lonely," he nearly whispered. "So afraid to leave..."

Shame and anger flared within her. She remained silent but he knew her mind.

"At night, desperate to sleep..." The knight paused slightly here. Her anguish threatened to overwhelm him. It was the danger of digging too deep into a mind strong with the force. Connections were formed that were difficult to control and difficult to sever. His mouth twitched involuntarily, the only indication of his own discomfort. He cursed himself for allowing this small display of unease but she wasn't looking at him anyway. Kylo Ren brushed against images of the sea then, hazy; faded. There was longing there as well, not his, but hers. He swallowed and continued. "...you imagine an ocean."

The girl seemed to be growing weaker, the pain of the intrusion too much for her. Her breathing was shallow, her eyes unfocused; half-closed. He could barely feel her resistance anymore. The images wrested from her mind grew clearer to him; fuller.

"I see it," he murmured softly, his manner strangely gentle now, as if they were recalling some sweet, shared secret together. His voice became soothing, like a father comforting a young child awakened from a nightmare. _It's okay. It's okay now. I'm here._ "I see the island."

The knight moved beyond the island, sifting casually through her thoughts, looking for the map. What he found instead was unexpected and filled him with spite.

"And Han Solo," Ren continued, unable to completely control his annoyance as he was confronted with his father's face. "You feel like he's the father you never had." He nearly sneered at that. _Stupid girl_. "He would have disappointed you," he assured her.

The girl's anger erupted and her eyes sparked back to life.

"Get out of my head!" she seethed through gritted teeth.

 _Strange that it should be his father who gave her the will to fight back._

The knight pulled back from his prisoner and stepped away, shaking off remembrances of slights and rejections before they could distract him. There was something else disturbing him though; remnants of that strange connection he had felt with this scavenger as he sorted through her fears and hurts. He had withdrawn from her mind and he had moved from her side, but it was as if he could still sense her in his head and beneath his fingertips. It left him agitated.

And the fact that he had somehow been affected by her at all only intensified his agitation.

 _How could this be?_ he wondered. _She's untrained. She doesn't even know what she is._

But doubt crept in and he recalled that brief glimpse of a child's hand grasping a small lightsaber, bright blue blade humming as it cut through the air.

Kylo Ren grunted, a faint sound he felt more than heard. Any connection between them had been severed when he pulled away from her. The lingering feeling was merely a ghost of the sensation created by his intense efforts. He knew very well that the force could be strange and oftentimes unexplainable. Thinking too hard on it was a waste of time, and just now, his time was most precious. He had a mission to complete and he did not intend to fail.

"I know you've seen the map. It's in there," he said to her, nodding slightly toward her head to indicate where the needed intelligence rested. "And now you'll give it to me."

She breathed heavily in anticipation and then he was back in her head, searching. The girl's head lifted from its resting place on the platform and moved toward Ren's outstretched hand as if she were a marionette being pulled by an invisible cord. She struggled against the pull but her efforts were futile.

Their connection intensified and he could no longer deny it. The girl, more alert than she had been when had first probed her mind, sensed it as well, though she did not comprehend what it was. She had no name for what was inside of her, and what was passing between them. It was strange, understanding the feeling from his own perspective while reading her confused thoughts surrounding that same experience. The knight understood that the unknown could breed fear, and so it was for this girl. As the dark side and the light swirled around them and bound them together in an invisible cocoon of radiating power, the scavenger's heartbeat quickened to a thunderous pace and her thoughts became filled with panic. She sensed the indisputable power, but she had no reference for it and did not know what it was that had her in its grasp. She thought _he_ was doing it to her, and maybe he was. She thought she was losing her mind, and before he was finished, it was entirely possible that she would. She thought she was having a nightmare. She thought she was dying. Her roiling emotions made it hard for him to find what he needed. He sought to pacify her so that he did not drown in the girl's anxieties.

"Don't be afraid," Kylo Ren said. "I feel it too."

Rather than comfort, something like resolve flooded the girl's mind then.

"I'm not giving you _anything,_ " she vowed.

"We'll see." He was confident; unconcerned. No one had ever successfully resisted him before, though most had tried, at least initially. The very idea was ridiculous. With a mere wave of his hand, he could cause her skull to collapse in on itself if he so chose. He had not been speaking with false bravado when he told her he could take whatever he wanted. Her secrets were his to explore at his leisure and the only question that remained was how much damage would she force him to do in order to retrieve the thing he wanted most?

Determined to put an end to her rebellion, the knight focused all his energy on the scavenger. He stared into her eyes, seeing picture after picture flash though his mind like cards being flipped at a lightning pace. _Jakku. Gnawing hunger deep in her belly. Longing for her family, unknown to her. FN-2187 taking her hand. A sense of gratitude for Han Solo's gruff approval._ He set his jaw and bored further into her mind. Ren saw himself then, looming, stalking her on Takodana as she stood frozen under his power. He felt her remembered terror. He felt the heat of his crackling red blade warming her cheek. He felt her certainty in that moment that she would die. Rey gasped, but still, she fought him, feebly pushing against his intrusion, throwing the same thought at him, over and over.

 _Get out get out get out get out!_

He stared at her in disbelief, feeling himself slip slightly. She hadn't pushed him out, but she _had_ pushed him. He felt it, and it was an unfamiliar sensation.

Gritting his teeth and flexing his fingers, the master of the Knights of Ren fought back. His anger rose at the girl's defiance. He pushed with a strength and will that he almost never used, for fear that it would destroy the mind he was probing. It wasn't that he ever felt remorse for leaving another's mind in ruins, but there was the risk of rendering the desired intelligence unreachable, lost forever in the abyss created by such brutal intrusion. But as this scavenger inexplicably shoved him from her head, Kylo Ren's control seemed to bleed from him and he lost all sense of prudence.

The girl's flinching and grimacing stopped then and her furrowed brow relaxed slowly. Her breathing steadied and when she lifted her head from the platform to stare more closely at the knight, it was under her own force of will, not because of the strange, uncontrollable cord that seemed even now to bind their minds together.

And then Ren felt something he had never felt before.

She was in _his_ head.

A look of surprise crossed both of their faces and the knight tried in vain to knock her away as she fumbled through his fears and desires.

"You..." she said in a tone of disbelief. "You're _afraid_... that you will never be as strong as Darth Vader!"

All at once, the space in his head expanded and contracted. He was filled with too many sensations at once; a cold ache that froze his core and traveled out to his fingertips and back again; emptiness and grief and the burning shame of his worst nightmares; a spike driven through his ear, deep into his skull; a hammer, pounding at his rib cage, cracking his bones; darkness so heavy and black, it was beyond anything he could comprehend. He was suffocating. He was collapsing. He was dissolving.

 _Was this how it felt?_ he wondered wildly and then summoned the strength to stumble away from her, breaking their connection and driving her from his mind.

Breathing raggedly, Kylo Ren stared at her, at Rey the _scavenger_ , trying to understand how she had done it. Her, a pitiful orphan, abandoned on a forgotten planet far away from anywhere that could be considered civilization, barely able to keep herself from starving. _She_ had forced her way into _his_ mind. _She_ had pulled out _his_ most closely held secret; the one he barely even admitted to himself. _She_ had used the force to overpower _him._

He drew in a deep breath to quell his nausea.

She had trained, however briefly. It had been so long ago that it had faded from her conscious memory, but he'd seen it; found it buried deep within her. She was strong with the force, but he wasn't the first to discover that. She'd been trained by Skywalker, he was sure of it. How else to explain the hazy memory he had glimpsed? That child's hand, _Rey's_ hand, gripping a small training saber.

The same sort of training saber he had been given when he was barely old enough to hold it properly.

He was no closer to the map than he was when he'd failed to leave Jakku with it. With such minimal training, long since forgotten, the girl had successfully resisted the master of the Knights of Ren and kept her secrets. Her power, though unrefined, was truly great.

His mind was a storm then, filled with his warring thoughts. So much hatred. So much jealousy. And so much dark joy at the possibilities she encompassed. Kylo Ren raised his eyes and gazed at Rey intently.

What she had could still be his.

The girl needed a teacher.

In that moment, he determined that it would be him.

* * *

 _ **Walk On—**_ U2


End file.
